Recent Articles
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Microsoft Changing Channels?
For the 400,000 resellers whose businesses depend on Microsoft’s partner programs, the past year has been spent watching Bill Gates wean himself from the company he built and wondering what the future holds for the world’s biggest technology partner ecosystem. Microsoft’s 400,000 worldwide partners drive about 95 percent of Microsoft’s revenue, according to Michael Speyer,…
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Without Gates, Microsoft`s Channel Changes Little
In our celebrity obsessed culture, we make superstars of musicians, elevate rich heiresses and B-movie actresses to global fame and create entire communities devoted to showcasing our own crudely produced Web videos. So it’s little wonder that the departure of a corporate icon such as Bill Gates is met with a mix of fear and…
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FOR ESP: Channel from Mars, Clients from Venus
It’s fascinating to conduct tandem studies where we ask the same questions of two different but related groups. That’s what we did with "Emerging Technologies: Channel versus CIOs," asking solution providers and (separately) their customers about adoption and use of emerging technologies. Tandem studies provide real insight into the differing worldviews of tightly-connected groups. And…
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Keep Pace with the Times
Judging by numbers alone, it looks as though the solution provider community became less relevant to IT vendors in 2007. If true, that would be shocking and scary. In 2007 allsigns pointed to strong indirect channel relationships. Vendors spent lots of money engaging and enabling solution provider partners, and the partners under went vast training.…
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No Guarantee of Success for Microsoft’s Hyper-V Virtualization
With the release to manufacturing of Hyper-V, Microsoft is hoping that Windows Server 2008 users will see the product as the de facto virtualization product for the enterprise. What’s more, Microsoft is looking to use Hyper-V as a catalyst for the expanded adoption of Windows Server 2008. While those accomplishments may be lofty goals, one…